Review #72: Pumpkinhead (1988)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #20: Pumpkinhead

This is one of those movies that I know I'd heard of as a kid, but never seen. And now that I've seen it I don't even know how I heard of it because I can guarantee nothing from this movie was part of the collective consciousness of my youth (whereas everyone knew about Jason in the hockey mask with a machete and Freddy wearing a sweater and killing you in your dreams, even though I never saw those movies until I was an adult).

Pumpkinhead is a story about a man whose son is accidentally killed by some fast-talking city folk come ridin' their bikes up and yonder, so he employs the talents of an old witch to get revenge. She summons Pumpkinhead, a being of pure vengeance, who goes on a killing spree- but as the bodies pile up, the man starts having second thoughts, and in trying to undo the summoning he finds that he and the monster have more in common than he thought...

This movie felt like a giant ball (pumpkin?) of contradictions to me; and I mean that in a good way. There were a ton of things that I really didn't like, but for each of those, there's something I really did like. For example, at first, I really hated the setting- the backwater hick aesthetic was really off-putting (and felt incredibly anachronistic given the time this takes place), but the further I got into the movie I loved the worldbuilding that came along with it. I thought the monster looked really bad when I first saw it in glimpses, but the more of it I saw, the more it felt perfect for the movie. At first I didn't care about any of the characters but I loved how it all came together in the end.

Like many of the movies I've watched this month, Pumpkinhead takes its sweet time getting to a point where I felt like I knew what the movie was about, but once it got there it was really fun and exciting. I mentioned liking the monster- I loved how it felt similar to many other horror creatures (it looked like a Xenomorph mixed with the Demogorgon from Stranger Things, and the first time you see it being brought to life it even resembled a grey alien to an extent) and whether it inspired some of those creatures or was inspired by them, it was used incredibly effectively and never overstayed its welcome. (Usually the moment you see a monster in a full-body shot you've just ruined the horror; but I never felt like that with this movie.)

This movie had a few cheesy effects (for most of the movie Pumpkinhead's main attack seems to be picking people up and dropping them, usually with a visual effect on the lens at the time) and there's a jump scare in here that's absolutely absurd (we have like a thirty-second shot of a kid sitting on his bed, and suddenly his dog just jumps up from off-screen and there's a loud noise and it's supposed to be scary I guess?) but all in all it's a very competently-made movie given the time it was made.

Oh! One more thing I don't want to forget: This movie deserves some MAD props for how it handles the boy's death early in the movie. Most of the time when someone dies in a film (even when it's a main character and/or someone very plot-relevant) you see it happen, then you see them lying on the ground, and then the scene moves on to something else and that's it. In this movie, you stay with the boy's body for what feels like forever. The characters freak out at the fact that he's been injured (it's quite some time before it's actually confirmed that he's dead). Even when most of the characters run away so as not to be accused of killing him, we still stay with the boy until his father comes home, realizes something is wrong, holds him in his arms, takes him to the witch, and eventually buries him. I feel like the boy's lifeless body got more screentime than most of the actors and it felt 100% appropriate. I wish more movies treated death as something that actually matters and affects the people around it (and this is coming from someone who loves horror and slashers). It made this actually feel like real people doing real things (plus magic pumpkin monsters).

Great movie that had some flaws but did a lot of things I didn't expect.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Trivia Tidbit: This movie is the film debut of Mayim Bialik!